


Winning the Race

by sdwolfpup



Category: due South
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-30
Updated: 2007-04-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 17:30:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: Anita Cortez was eight years old when she first heard the story ofla tortuga y la liebre.  She thought it was dumb.





	Winning the Race

**Author's Note:**

> For ds_aprilfools prompt 02: Slow and steady. Many thanks to brynnmck for looking it over and helping me figure out the ending. Thanks to girlfmkitty for correct Spanish! Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Anita Cortez was eight years old when she first heard the story of _la tortuga y la liebre_. She thought it was dumb. A hare would never lose to a tortoise, not unless it was a truly _estupida_ hare. And Anita was not stupid; she had made sure of it. She couldn’t afford to be, where she grew up. Women who were slow, women who didn’t learn or pay attention, they became mothers of abusive husbands or _putas_ or worse. Even at eight years old, Anita knew she wouldn’t grow up to be that. So she scampered like a rabbit through the trash piles, salvaged pages of books from the fire, and spent as much time away from home as she could, usually at the mall until _los guardas de seguridad_ chased her out again. The trash where she lived was piled in long walls, the stench clinging to everything that sat there, and eventually the people who sat there, too. Anita never slowed down, afraid it would settle on her.

When Anita was thirteen, she met _El Halcón_ for the first time. He had come to her neighbor’s shelter to arrest their oldest son, Roberto, for destroying property. Anita hid in the doorway, watching the cop. She had heard of _El Halcón_ ; everyone had. She had expected him to have a big, sharp nose, like the bird he was named after, but everything about him was round and plain. He had a round face, a round, unsmiling mouth, round shoulders. Her neighbors tried to give him everything they had in order to not take the boy, but _El Halcón_ walked Roberto out in handcuffs without a word. When he passed through the door, he spotted Anita, and he turned his round eyes on her. He had sharp eyes, like his namesake, so she just turned and ran.

A week later he was back in the area, because the Romeros had been fighting again and now they were both missing. Anita watched _El Halcón_ , the way he moved in slow, purposeful steps; how he watched everything, noticed everything. When he saw her, he smiled this time and she didn’t run. He called her “ _conejito_ ” – little rabbit – and gestured for her to come nearer. “¿Qué ve usted?” he’d asked her. _What do you see?_ Anita looked around, saw the trash and the tracks of the lives she and her neighbors were eking out.

“Nada, señor.”

 _El Halcón_ shook his head, and showed her everything she had missed. When she was sitting on her crate to eat that night, a meal of beans cooked in the can it’d been thrown away in, she told her mother all about _El Halcón_ : what he’d nicknamed her, what he’d taught her, how she wanted to be a cop, too. Her mother had just said that she should be careful; hawks ate rabbits in the wild. Anita knew not every rabbit. Not the smart ones, the ones who watched and paid attention. Not the fast ones.

Anita was seventeen when she saw _El Halcón_ for the last time. They were standing at the edge of the entrance to the dump, he’d found her there as she was leaving with the suitcase she’d salvaged from the wreckage she lived in. He said “Hola, conejito,” when he saw her, and waved her over. He asked about her plans, and Anita told him how she was heading into the city, how she had managed to find a job paying just enough to live on and save the rest for entrance to the Academy.

“No voy a ninguna parte,” she’d said. _I’m going nowhere, here._ “I have to get away.”

“Ah, Anita,” he’d said with a sigh. “You still run so fast. That will only get you so far, little rabbit.”

Anita folded her arms around herself. She could feel the heat of her own warm skin through her thin t-shirt. “Far enough.”

“It won’t get you through the Academy.”

“Everything you taught me will.”

 _El Halcón_ had smiled at her then, a wide smile that split his round face and showed his yellowed teeth. “Don’t run too far, eh? I want to know when you graduate.”

She nodded at him, and they sat in silence for awhile longer, until the summer sun started to set. He offered her a ride into town, but she only took it to the bus stop. She needed to complete this race on her own; she’d learned that much from _la tortuga y la liebre_.

“Buena suerte, conejito” _El Halcón_ said, giving her a last wave before driving off.

Anita was twenty-five when she finally graduated from the Academy. She wrote to _El Halcón_ to tell him, and said that sometimes rabbits did cross the finish line. She wrote it on a postcard that she’d found at one of the local shops. The front picture had a tortoise with the finish line ribbon flapping from its shell, and a rabbit sitting on its back, riding to victory. 


End file.
